memoirs, art and fragments by Thomas Milner

Oh, these warm July afternoons! I decide to fill in the time between lunch and tea by starting a new painting. Accordingly I wheel myself up to the first floor to my painting room, take up a fresh sheet of gummed A3 paper and sit in front of it for about five minutes, my mind as blank as the paper in front of me … I pull myself together and sweep a confident pencil stroke diagonally the paper and then another and a shorter one and then I’m off.

STAGE 1

The next afternoon I enter the uncomfortable world of colour. The picture is indicating organic growth of some sort (there are no straight lines; I have denied myself the comfort of my trusty ruler).

STAGE 2

Next day I’m two minds about whether to carry on with it or abandon the wretched thing but, being irredeemably lazy, I settle for the former in the hope that my retrieval skills can rescue it.

STAGE 3

The final afternoon sees me doing some major tinkering, touching up, colour adjustment and generally fiddling about with it. At ten minutes to four I stop, spray it with a cheap and rather nasty-smelling hair fixative and call it a day.